We are less than a week into the New Year and already two Bermuda families are mourning two more road traffic fatalities.

The latest tragedies will doubtless prompt the usual expressions of sympathy from politicians, road safety agencies and the police along with the usual calls for drivers to slow down and take more care.

But it’s doubtful they will result in anything like the remedial action which is actually necessary.

For bad, sometimes suicidally reckless driving habits, inconsistent policing and the introduction of cars and motorcycles which are too powerful for roads originally intended for one- or two-horsepower traffic (quite literally) are just parts of the problem.

The fact is neglect of many of the necessities required to sustain development in Bermuda in recent decades has extended to our roads infrastructure.

A very obvious for-instance relates to the fact no effort was ever made to discourage an overconcentration of office development at the western end of Hamilton during the building boom of the late ‘90s and early 21st century.

The punishing effects of this overdevelopment on through traffic, let alone on the City’s manifestly inadequate sewage disposal system, were predictable. Equally predictably these entirely foreseeable problems were ignored. As has so often been the case in Bermuda’s modern history, the ability to earn a quick buck proved entirely more enticing than ensuring long-term sustainability.

In fact no concerted effort has been made to improve traffic flow anywhere at all in Bermuda for at least the last 15 years.

Some of this can be laid at the door of Government’s unwillingness to pay for the needed enhancements of the existing roads systems; some of it is, of course, the result of NIMBY outcries in areas where tentative plans for major roadworks have occasionally been floated. But most of it stems from ingrained Bermudian lassitude when it comes to the need for formulating even the most basic forward planning imperatives.

Similarly, periodic bleating about reducing traffic volume by limiting the ability to own or operate vehicles have routinely been overwhelmed by periodic spikes in the population. Today the only actual limit on the number of vehicles on our roads is the number of licensed drivers to drive them.

With the 2017 America’s Cup fast approaching, we can reasonably expect relatively rapid upswings in both the numbers of resident guest workers and visitors on the Island. And those additional numbers will translate into a commensurate increase in the amount of motorised traffic on our roads.

It’s true that some effort has been made to improve Bermuda’s public transportation system in recent years, but not nearly enough. If we are not to die of hardening of the arteries of our inadequate road and transport systems a viable alternative to private vehicles must be produced.

This must not only be satisfactory for moving large numbers of people to and from their places of work, it must also allow people to get to and from their grocery stores, to move their children to and from school, to get a lawn-mower to its service provider, to go to a doctor or a dentist, and almost any other regular need.

The best option would most likely be something like Japan’s showpiece elevated monorail systems which link resort, residential and business areas in its cities with a minimum of impact on the environment and a maximum of efficiency.

Such an updated version of the old Bermuda Railway is increasingly becoming a necessity for the Island, not an expensive luxury. In recent decades Bermuda has made an extremely rapid transition from sleepy resort destination to financial and insurance hub and now to the venue for one of the world’s top sporting events.

Bermuda is now operating in an increasingly sophisticated, increasingly globalised milieu and ever increasing demands will continue to be placed upon us and our infrastructure. And the reality is we can no longer rely on the improvisational, muddle-through approach to infrastructure development which served us in the past.

Our infrastructure was not entirely adequate 30 years ago when the Island began its wholesale economic and cultural transformation. And almost nothing of substance has been done to improve that infrastructure in those 30 years.

There are no plans in place now to repair the damage by neglect already done to the sustainability of our development, still less to sustain what even the most slow-witted among us seem to be able to see is coming in the very near future.

But if we are not to be entirely overwhelmed by what awaits us, long-term sustainability has to finally prevail over the ability to earn a quick buck during the run-up to the America’s Cup.